The historical context and personal lives of academic figures does matter and should be taught alongside their theories and contributions to their respective fields.
Oftentimes, students are taught to view thinkers as having created immutable, eternal truths with the implication that the moral value of these truths correlates with the morality of the actual thinker.
The reality is that philosophers are just human beings and, a lot of the time, what they write is in some way influenced by the historical context they existed in.
Take John Locke for example. His writings in his two treatises argue strongly against enslavement, but at the same time, Locke was secretary of the Lord’s Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, and during his time there, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina was drafted, constitutionally permitting slavery.
Locke himself owned stock in slave trading corporations.
It’s important to teach this history alongside John Locke’s work on the social contract, a pillar of Western democratic society, for a few reasons.
First, teaching students about a philosopher’s hypocrisy does not diminish the usefulness of other areas of their work. Having an “all good” or “all bad” view of history creates a sense of false historical grandeur when students compare the academia of the past to the academia of today.
Refraining from sharing historical context also leads to a romantic view of a past culture that was largely patriarchal, classist and racist towards all who were not wealthy White noblemen. This is problematic as modern academia has largely shifted to become more inclusive and open.
False presentations of the past create a view of a lost grandeur that is currently being used by political actors across the world to regress social rights for various members across society to reclaim a lost idea that never existed.
Second, academia should not place thinkers on a pedestal to make them appear beyond-human. Philosophy and specifically political philosophy are not immutable truths, but instead era-specific arguments.
It’s fundamentally impossible to cut and paste any philosophy from the past onto the world of today given how drastically both social rights and technology have evolved.
There is room to build upon existing philosophies or to adapt them, but to do that we must humanize the philosopher and acknowledge their shortcomings.
Take technology and the rise of A.I. There is a lot of room to create and expand philosophy and political thought into these areas and to determine how best to position society to deal with them as opposed to sitting back and allowing technofeudalism to cement itself entirely.
Finally, telling the full story of a thinker’s history builds trust with students and the wider public at large.
Presenting the full story can help to deconstruct the black-and-white thinking that society has been set in. Sometimes there are no clear “good guys” or “bad guys,” but instead individual events and discoveries that can be viewed for their morality independent of the larger labels they fall under.
Transparency is the best policy towards advancing the Humanities, as it doesn’t take away from but adds to the theories taught, opens the door to a diverse society, dispels myths of a grand age and builds a culture of nuanced discussion in the general public.